Lesbian seeks mayor's post

ANN ARBOR, Mich. For the second year in a row, Ann Arbor's Human Rights Party is running an open Lesbian for city office Carol Ernst, candidate for mayor.

City Council member Kathy Kozachenko, the nation's first upfront gay to be elected to public office, won election to a two-year term in 1974 and is not up for election in the April 7 balloting.

As with Kozachenko last year, Ernst is not finding her Lesbianism to be much of an issue.

Everyone knows about it, observers confirmed, but the emphasis of her campaign is on her background as a labor-union and feminist activist and as a radical womanand on the two charter amendments which the Human Rights Party has placed on the city election ballot.

Page 4 HIGH GEAR, April, 1975

The proposals would permit the city to adopt rent controls for all housing in the University of Michigan-dominated city of 100,000, and set aside 1.7

per cent of the city budget (about $300,000 a year) to finance full-time day-care centers for the children of working couples.

Ernst, 30, is a bus driver and dispatcher for the city bus line and a steward for the drivers union.

On the other hand, Ernst is given no chance at all of unseating first-term Mayor James Stephenson, a moderate Republican patent attorney who is running on his record of fiscal prudence. The Democratic nominee is Dr. Al Wheeler of the university's School of Public Health faculty.

Ann Arbor is the home of the country's first two elected officials to come out publicly as gay.

Council members Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck made their announcements during Council debate over the city's gay-rights ordinance in 1973. Neither of these two Human Rights Party members ran for re-election in 1974, however.

Succeeding them, however, was Kozachenko, 22, a clerical worker at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the university.

DANCE

Bring this & a friend to the Gay Dance on April 11. Save 50¢ 9pm-lam/2600 Church

2/$1.50

MADISON, Wis.

Without dissent, debate or even a question, the 22-member City Council enacted a sweeping revision of Madison's Equal Opportunities Ordinance March 11 that covers gay women and men.

Besides gays, the law protects transvestites and transsexuals from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, public facilities and credit.

Moreover, where some politicians shy from endorsing so potentially a controversial question near an election, Mayor Paul Soglin introduced the measure less than three weeks before he seeks a second term in the April 1 city election. Thus, effective upon legal publication in the local press, there is a $500 maximum fine for discriminating in this city of 172,000 on the basis of age, handicap, marital status, economic status, physical appearance, political beliefs, student status or sexual orientation. The law already covered race, religion, sex and national orgin.

"Sexual orientation" is defined as "homosexuality, heterosexuality, transsexualism, transvestism and bisexuality by preference or practice."

That was the language in one draft of the amendments prepared by the city's Equal Opportunties Commission, which must find "probable cause" that the law has been violated before the city can prosecute. The final draft was not immediately available.

Harvey Darnell, who is virtually the sole surviving member of the Gay Political Caucus which began to work for the bill in 1973, said there was little trouble persuading the city commission to include gays in the revisions.

"The only thing that delayed getting it passed was that the commission kept adding new categories that they wanted to cover," Darnell said. Darnell worked for the bill almost

single-handed since last May, when the last politically-oriented gay group expired.

Mayor Soglin brought it up March 11 after it had already been determined that no committee referral or public hearing was required. He introduced it as an item of the mayor's business on a 70-item agenda.

Neither of Madison's major daily newspapers carried a word about the bill the next day, nor did The Daily Cardinal, the University of Wisconsin newspaper, although reporters did write about other politically-oriented items before the City Council that evening.

Oddly enough, there are already two sex-related questions on the city ballot for April, both dealing with city regulation of massage parlors, an issue inspired by the fiery conservative Rev. Richard Pritchard.

Massage parlors and gay rights would also have been an unsympathetic concern for William Dyke, the conservative mayor whom Soglin unseated in 1973 when Soglin was "the hippie alderman" from a campus ward who joined the anti-war protest marches led by students.

Last year ex-mayor Dyke became the Republican candidate for governor. He lost badly.

This year the 29-year-old Soglin is running for a second term. His opponent April 1 is given no chance whatsoever.

Liberal rejects plea

AKRON, Ohio Rep. John Seiberling, D-Ohio, a liberal who has a 100 per cent rating from Americans for Democratic Action, met with three Akron gays in February and told them he would not co-sponsor federal gay-rights legislation.

"I'm not anxious to do anything to promote homosexuality," he was quoted as saying. "The people on that kick should look elsewhere. They're missing something in life."

Bentsen asks Democrats

to appoint gay

By Joe Stewart

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON-Presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen has asked the Democratic National Committee to appoint an openly gay Democrat to the party's Personal Freedoms and Civil Rights Study Group.

Sen. Bentsen, a Texas Democrat who announced for president in February, was revealed as a supporter of the gay activists' proposal at a meeting March 4 between. four gay men and Democratic officials, scheduled to discuss the gay role in party affairs.

Rima Parkhurst, assistant director of the party's Advisory Council, announced that Bentsen is among those who wrote Democratic headquarters, after gays actively solicited letters of support from gay rank-and-filers and prominent Democrats who are non-gay.

Others who wrote in included Reps. Phillip Burton of California and Patricia Schroeder of Colorado.

The letter campaign followed the publication of a quip about a "collection of fags" by Democratic Chairman Robert Strauss. He later apologized in a letter to Bruce Voeller of New York City.

Strauss did not attend on March 4, however, and a meeting with the chairman is still being sought.

At the March 4 session Voller's proposal to seat an open gay on the civil-rights panel was also supported by Democratic National Committeewoman Mary Lou Berg. Berg directed John Stewart, director of the Advisory Council, to study a list of possible appointees.

Parkhurst announced that Burke Marshall, who was described as uncooperative with gay proposals, has resigned as chairman of the civil-rights panel. His successor is Saridy Berger, a Washington attorney who has promised that gay rights are actively discussed once the panel begins to meet.

Much of the meeting was devoted to giving elementary information to the Democratic officials about the discrimination faced by the gay minority, and how gays are regularly ignored in political and other circles. The four activists made clear that they expect full and open debate of gay rights at the 1976 National Convention, as happened in 1972 in Miami.

Voeller, who is executive director of the National Gay Task Force, recited a lengthy list of legislative and other gains won by gay people in recent years. When officials complained that gay rights are "a tough and senstive issue," Voeller replied that politicians are usually the last people to recognize changes in public attitudes.

The party should deal with homophobic backlashes, active gay Democrat Paul Kunzler suggested, no differently from the way it handles racial bias and anti-Semitism.

The meeting closed with a consensus that gays should continue to take an active part in Democratic party affairs, and Berg noted that 1976 platform hearings will begin in a few months.

Those attending, besides Voeller and Kunzler, included Jim Zais of GAA/D.C. and a gay reporter.

Teacher wins

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court has ruled that a Turner, Ore., high-school teacher was wrongfully fired because she is gay.

However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it could not order Peggy Burton reinstated in her job because she was a second-year, probationary teacher who did not have tenure.

Burton was hired in July 1970 at Union High School, and it was during her second year of teaching that the principal called her in to discuss rumors that she is a Lesbian, She acknowledged it, court records indicated, and the School Board fired her.

A federal district judge in Portland awarded her $750 in attorney's fees and damages equal to 11⁄2 years' pay, finding that there is no relationship between being gay and her ability to teach. The judge ordered the records of her firing expunged.

The appeals court upheld the Portland judge in January, saying that the damage award would serve to discourage other boards of education from making similar errors in dismissing teachers